Gobs o’Trouble

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• *sigh*

  • It's only going to get worse

• You know what they say about not judging a book by its cover? Lies!

  A lot of great modules have barely any production values, or feature some kind of chicken scratches (apologies to Scrap Princess), but all the modules with this early computer gen cover design are terrible, and always have been.

• Five star review! Copper best seller!

  Clearly, I have a lot to learn about the publishing business...

• Bryce you never reviewed Tabors city called Balkin!

  At the least it will cheer you up ?

• Bryce you never reviewed Tabors city called Balkin!

  At the least it will cheer you up ?

• As the recent module contest demonstrated, it's just not *that difficult* to put a decent adventure together - even a short, eight-page, one. It isn't. We had some fan-tastic first-time authors.

  It does, however, require a working knowledge of the game. Sometimes I wonder how these quasi-adventures come to be. Surely, these authors have read other modules? Run one? ... at least *played* in one?

  Bueller? Bueller?

• No maps? WTF kind of D&D is this?

• Could this be the platonic ideal of a brain-dead and mundane "orcs (ok, goblins) in a hole" lo-level adventure?

  Also, will we be getting an "orcs in a hole" contest?

  • I bet if we get another contest, Bryce makes it a broad category so we don't get 30 "Fishmen in a floating tower" or whatever theme that he has to review and we have to read. Haha!

• So I'm am absolutely not going to defend this adventure or this style of adventure ... but ... presumably someone put TIME into this. Maybe not as much time as many adventure designers, but at least several, maybe even 20 or more actual human hours. I can't see anyone doing that out of anything other then that they get some kind of joy out of writing elfgame stuff. Presumably also playing games? Money alone would suggest panhandling as a more lucrative pastime.

  If this was written by a person who likes games, and wants to write adventures, why does it struggle this mcuh? I know why it fails at a technical level, it's written for S&W - an OSR era retroclone, but appears to be designed as a series of 5E style scene based encounters. The writer isn't entirely locked into the 5E paradigm though, because a hydra doesn't sound like a balanced encounter. They have absorbed at least one vague idea of what classic adventure design involves - the possibility of asymmetrical encounters. What happened to the rest - like maps?

  I don't blame this designer though. Why are the disparate communities of what was once the OSR so bad at propagating play style and design knowledge? Obviously neither post-1980's graphic design or mechanical & tonal fidelity to the implied setting of TSR's D&D will do the work on their own. What might encourage people who lack knowledge but have desire and 10 - 40 hours to actually write a decent exploration adventure?

  What might help resolve this issue?

  • @ GusL:

    Maybe if people would start (or try) reading again. Books, words, blogs, etc.

    No, pithy social media scrawls don't count.

    I don't know if the person who wrote (designed? apply loosely) this adventure "loves elf-games" or not. Maybe? Probably? But it would appear pretty clear that whoever wrote the thing could probably stand to read more. Read the instructions of the game for which they're writing. Read classic adventure modules. Read blogs (like this one!) that explain the do's and don't's of adventure writing/design. Read books on technical writing. Read good fiction. Read history. Read...well, just read.

    Game books (like published adventures) are a literary medium. Study of the medium requires both practice and research/learning. The practice of writing is in the writing: good. The research of writing is in reading. Without a foundational knowledge base, the practice is going to be shit.

    People need to read more.

  • The answer to propagating knowledge of proper adventure design should begin at actual play/community level and move from that foundation. It is regrettable places what should be places of common discourse like the OSR discord engage in heavy handed censorship and exercise extreme prejudice against oldschoolers based on matters that are peripheral to gaming.

    There are healthier communities like the Aaron the pedantic Discord, where there is a broad spread of experience, from recent converts straight from 5e to oldschoolers that have been playing AD&D for 20 years. The result is a spirited exchange of ideas and perspectives, a broad range of opinions, and more importantly, games being run weekly by individuals of various experience levels.

    The formulation of theoretical methods can be a useful tool in guiding experimentation but it is the experimentation and the constant ensuing feedback that is the most salient. Ultimately D&D is something that must be experienced as well as taught. It is an observable fact that for every 'Jaqueying the Dungeon' there are a thousand posts on theory that are diverting as fodder for discussion but that have no lasting impact.

    • Try the OSR Pick-Up Games Discord server as well. Very active, relaxed, chill community. Multiple weekly games. Contests. Cool people.

      https://discord.gg/PWfgBss

  • In addition, there is a notion, poorly understood by its detractors, that fealty to the original format of the game endows the adventure with a type of mystical potency that will allow it to succeed where bold innovation will fail. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    There is something to be said, however, for using not only the mechanics of the original game but importing a great deal of its components, it's library of spells, monsters, items and so on as well. Not only are these 'proven', in the sense that they have often stood the test of time and have proved subjects of fascination for multiple generations of gamers, there is an intricate arms race between the three, designed not from the top but grown over years of playtesting, that is inherent to the potency of the game. Specifically, countless spells and items exist solely to deal with certain monster attributes and vice versa. Disdaining to use these elements risks invalidating great swathes of the game. New retroclones often lack this refinement and are too often abandoned before any revision or refinement can take place.

    It is certainly possible that a wholly original catalogue may be established from the ground up with every bit as much complexity, richness and variety as the original game, but this requires both talent, understanding and extreme persistence, a rare confluence of skills. So unless one is M.A.R. Barker, Oakes Spalding or whoever did the Nightmares Below retroclone, there is a real risk of regression.

    • It's the OSR trifecta, modules, campaign worlds, rulesets. We need good modules but every designer seems to want to show off their campaign world () and the tweaks to the rules that they've come up with to make their campaign worlds come to life (oh yay! another retroclone!). I understand the motivation. We're PROUD of our campaign worlds. But no one else cares! The only campaign worlds that really took off were Greyhawk (by EGG so duh!), Forgotten Realms (Ed Greenwood was very good at creating intriguing fluff for Dragon magazine, so TSR had a built-in audience when they bought it from him), and maybe some of the hexcrawl worlds here and there (like Nod). Most of the other campaign worlds that have come out over the years are largely forgotten.

  • There are no excuses left anymore. Anyone capable of uploading their work to DTRPG can read all the same blog posts that I have (well, except for the blogs that were deleted cause of the Nazis under the bed...). Start somewhere and click around for a few months. It's just not that fucking hard - if one cares enough to learn.

• People do realise this is not a recent offering from a neophyte? The same author had previously written the much better and more substantial "The Beast that Waits", which has been reviewed here and was awarded "No Regerts". I'd view this as a (rushed out?) sidequest (that doesn't add much).

  Authors do visit this blog, note the criticisms in the spirit of wanting to improve, and receive nods of approval in the comments. To JB's sage advice, I would add playtest your work (and play good modules). Superior work abounds in the OSR, just check the "The Best" and "No Regerts" lists. It is the official 5e offerings that deserve the tagline "I know you've seen this idea before, but have you ever seen it done this badly?"

  • This!

    Playtest, playtest, playtest! There simply is no substitute.

    As with anything else, as PoN mentions above, there's also no substitute to actually reading and -this is key- running good modules, to learn what works and, perhaps more importantly, HOW it works.

    I really feel that an "Appendix N" should be compiled of the most-influential and damn fine modules.